Senior Principal Scientist, Agentic Systems Development for Drug Discovery

Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States; hybrid with three days per week onsite. An onsite option is also available five days per week with ad hoc flexibility.

Salary: $168,000–$252,000 annual base salary, plus potential annual bonus and equity awards.

Company

Vertex is a global biotechnology company investing in scientific innovation.

What you will do

• Translate scientific requirements into agentic AI solutions that autonomously reason, plan, and execute complex tasks.
• Build, test, and deploy AI-enabled solutions for small-molecule and protein drug discovery.
• Collaborate with computational scientists, software engineers, and cross-functional research teams on scalable AI systems.
• Apply software engineering, DevOps, CI/CD, and compliance practices to production-grade scientific applications.
• Design testing, evaluation, and validation strategies for agentic AI systems.
• Prototype emerging agentic AI and generative AI capabilities and assess their scientific impact.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry, Cheminformatics, or a related scientific discipline.
• More than 8 years of experience in scientific software development applied to drug discovery programs.
• Expertise in small-molecule computational methods and cheminformatics.
• Experience developing, deploying, and managing AI-enabled scientific products, platforms, or applications.
• Strong Python, machine learning, AI, system design, software development, CI/CD, and DevOps skills.
• Ability to communicate technical trade-offs and collaborate across discovery research, computational sciences, data science, and engineering.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative work across computational sciences, research teams, and Digital Technology & Engineering.
• Medical, dental, and vision benefits.
• Generous paid time off, including summer and winter company shutdowns.
• Educational assistance, including student loan repayment programs.
• Commuting subsidy, charitable donation matching, and 401(k).